Pros and cons of dating apps │ How Love Makes Us Human with Dr Anna Machin

Would you trust a dating app to pick the right partner for you?

Dating apps have changed the way we find a date and they have many positives. For example, they've increased the pool that we can choose from and this is particularly important if, like members of the LGBTQ+ community, you might find it difficult to find somebody suitable in your area. They've also decreased the costs of finding somebody. In the past, you would have had to have got yourself ready, gone to the bar and spent time chit-chatting to the person to decide whether or not they were right for you. Now, we have people who are pre-filtered and all we have to do is swipe left or right meaning it's a really low-cost way of finding someone. Also, the opportunity to find a date is available to you 24/7 and dating apps are successful. For the very first time in America, most people have found their long-term partner on a dating app or on the Internet, rather than through their friends. But dating apps also have their negative associations. For a start we have the paradox of choice.

Let me tell you a little story as an analogy. Let's say you have a toddler and you take them into a sweet shop, and you say you can have one or two types of sweets. Now, they might have a little bit of whining, but they will generally reasonably quickly make a choice. However, if you were to take that toddler into the shop and say you can literally have anything you want generally, a tantrum results and the reason for this is because the child is cognitively incapable of taking a decision among so many different options. That is the paradox of choice and it's one of the reasons why dating apps have made us spend a lot of time procrastinating.

The other thing we've seen on dating apps is extreme mate choice. We know that 35% of men on Tinder swiped right for everybody. This has meant that women end up with hundreds of likes which has caused them to become super, super picky and we have these extreme differences in the way men and women behave on that platform. Also, using an app handicaps your brain.

For a start it handicaps it in relation to your ability to spot a liar. When we're in the real world, we are very good at assessing whether somebody's going to lie or cheat; we use our theory of mind. However, when you're online your brain is not capable of using all its different instincts to enable it to do that which means you're more open to being lied to and cheated when people are using apps. It also handicaps our brain in relation to our sensors. As we know, we use our sensors to assess a lot about a person in the first split second we've met them, but our sensors are pretty useless, apart from our sense of sight, when we're using online apps which really rely on a visual image. And sometimes that image is either very, very old or not even the person you're talking to. Really, what we have to remember about dating apps is they are really an introduction tool and the best thing that you can do, is as quickly as possible and when it's safe to do so, meet the person in real life to really allow yourself the full range of your brain to decide whether they're right for you.

Another big frontier in love and dating is our extended lifespan and particularly that of postmenopausal women. A really interesting thing happened between 2015 and 2016 in the UK. We saw a 10% increase in men over 50 starting divorces and a 15% increase in women and this is probably because of the extended lifespan. The average age of menopause hasn't really altered through evolutionary time, it's about 50. So, maybe a hundred years ago a woman would live till 52 on average, so she's had a couple of years of post-reproductive life. Today, the lifespan can go into your 80s or your 90s which means women can have 20, 30 or 40 years of postmenopausal life and maybe that makes them think is the relationship I formed when I wanted to be a parent, the relationship I want now for my later years? And this has led some women to start relationships anew. But what are they looking for?

Our mate choice criteria are based very much on those who are young and then they are choosing the parent of their child. But what do we want in somebody later in life? We actually still don't know, and we are watching at this exciting period. It might be indicators of kindness, of sharing or being a caring personality and companionship is probably incredibly important as you go forward into your older years, but also novelty keeps the love alive. And what about other ways of loving? Polyamory for a start. It might be that postmenopausal women start to explore these different ways of loving now they've moved beyond the reproductive relationship.

Could you fall in love with a robot?

In the next episode, we explore if artificial intelligence can provide a cure for loneliness.

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